Mahagonny. com 
 
contemporary theater companies continues the anti-theatrical 
impulse of modernism  "by other, technological means" (175) 
overlooks one of the most obvious features that the post-dramatic 
productions of The Wooster Group, but also of Richard Foreman, 
Robert Wilson, and Elevator Repair Service have in common: their 
relentless and highly effective exploration of a theatricality that is no

longer tied to the "aura" of the impersonating actor (Benjamin)
but 
results from a theatricalization of diegesis itself, be it textual or 
technological. 
Markus Wessendof 
University of Hawai'i at Manoa 
Tom Kuhn and Steve Giles, eds. Brecht on Art and Politics. London: 
Methuen, 2003. 
A vital body of Brecht's theoretical writings was unavailable in 
English until this year's arrival of Brecht on Art and Politics. Editors

Tom Kuhn and Steve Giles, along with Laura Bradley, translated the 
essays, letters, and fragments that comprise this much-needed 
volume of political and aesthetic theory. Material included dates 
from 1914 ("Excerpts from the Augsburg War Letters") to 1956 ("On
the 
Criticism of Stalin") and the potential for dialogue between these 
writings and the pieces included in Brecht on Theatre and Brecht on 
Film and Radio is immediately provocative. Though the editors half- 
heartedlyjoke that the volume is "to a certain extant, a compendium

of 'Brecht on everything else' (3), the writings insistently return to key

issues which also frame Brecht's more specific theater and media 
writings. Indeed, Brecht on Art and Politics does the very valuable 
work of presenting texts that capture Brecht's shifting, subtle 
negotiation of official Marxist / Communist discourse over his lifetime,

but more important is the book's attention to core issues about the 
role of art in society. The selections in this volume provide further 
elaboration about Brecht's ideas on the nature of spectatorship, the 
use-value of art, the relationship of form and content, and the contest 
of "culture" and "barbarism" that will certainly impact
Brecht 
scholarship in English during the coming years. 
Organized into five chronological sections, the volume begins 
with a section called "Early Writings and Polemics 1914-1928" that

showcases a young Brecht's breathless tour through theoretical 
positions, aesthetic judgments, and political stances. The impact of 
World War 1 looms over this section, and Brecht's peripatetic critical 
celebrations  (of detective  novels) and  condemnations  (of 
Expressionism) are haunted by a darkening political vision beautifully 
captured in a piece called "On Habitual Patriotism," which should
be 
required reading for Americans in the age of the unilateral presidency 
 
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